Ghosts Live Inside Us And Sometimes They Win
by lydiagrace
Summary: One-Shot. Pansy returns to Hogwarts after the war, and she's wasting away.


Pansy walked down the halls of Hogwarts, slowly, deliberately. She knew where she had to go, she knew what she had to do. It was a funny thing, this world she lived in. It was all angles, sharp edges, waiting for her to slip and cut herself on one of them. It was a trap that she was trying so hard not to fall into, but the more she tried to avoid it, to gain control, the more she was bleeding, the more she was falling.

Pansy knew she had to do something Great. Or something Wonderful. Or Different. After the war had ended and she went back to Hogwarts, she knew she had to make up for what had happened. Show that she was really sorry. That was when she started her great Plan. Her Plan also involved her becoming something Great.

She couldn't wait to be exalted, exalted as the reformed-ex-wanna-be-death-eater that she was seen as now. This plan, her Plan, had consumed her like a wildfire, eating, burning, wanting everything in it's path. She destroyed homes, and lives in the path to get what she wanted.

She had some illusion of what the world after would be, once she put this plan into affect. But now things weren't going according to the Plan, and they weren't going fast or smooth or nicely enough.

And now she was alone, without even success or the Plan to keep her company. So instead she started working on destroying one of the only things she had left; herself. Every morning she woke up, and put together her pieces. Put on her smile, practiced her Gryffindor sneer. Everyday she got up and went for a run around Hogwarts grounds. Round and round the lake, five miles.

Then she went to the library for research and work on her plan; skipped breakfast. Classes all day, then nap time for lunch because not eating all day and exercising and waking up early exhausted her. After her nap she would have a piece of celery, or a carrot, and go to her afternoon classes. She soon learned that without that carrot or celery she would pass out about two-thirds of the way through Defense Against the Dark Arts (which was bullshit anyway) or half way through her double Potions class.

After class she would go run again; another ten miles; skip dinner. She had a cup of coffee after dinner (black, no sugar), and then worked until she could no longer stand. She would fall in her bed, fall to pieces, and fall asleep.

She understood what was happening, of course she was. No one ever understood how smart she truly was, how ambitious, how truly Slytherin. They just saw her upturned nose, and her sneer and chose to call her "pug-faced". She proceeded to hate her body, her face, everything that betrayed her flaws to the world without exalting her strengths.

On her late nights in the library, she would find herself migrating over to the muggle section. It was musky and layered in dust, only disrupted when the librarian got the new books for each year. Despite herself she was always surprised when she wandered to the sections of books on mental health. Always wondering to herself what she was doing there? She was Healthy.

Healthy was one of those words. Capital letter words that meant something. A few other capital letter words were Plan, Great, Wonderful, Different, Death Eater, Good, and most importantly Thin. These capital words were slowly eroding everything she knew to be true about herself and her future but then again, the war had pretty much done that too.

She saw the war's first ladies of Ginny and Hermione, strong and most prominently in her mind; Thin. Thin was the key to everything. Everything. To being a war hero, to being lauded, to being beautiful and smart and head-girl or prefect, to being perfect.

Sitting in her arm chair in the corner of the library, Pansy would read the sections on anorexia nervosa, on anxiety, on PTSD, and gleeful diagnose herself with all of them. She would eat less and less calories to fit into the anorexic category, happy to finally belong some place with a title. Anorexia seemed like a world where everything was skinny and happy and perfect.

Then one day, she looked in the mirror and stopped seeing what had always been there. She started seeing a girl with ghosts in her sunken cheeks, and ghosts twining in and out her thighs. She saw Draco's ghost peering around her bony elbows, her parent's sitting on her jaw bones, using her cheek bones as swings. She saw Voldemort perched on her hip bones, and the rest of her schoolmates clinging to her knees; wider than her thighs.

Suddenly it all made sense. She wasn't just trying to become Thin. Thin had a new meaning, all of a sudden. That Hunger that meant Power, became that Hunger that meant the End. Instead of reading books about anorexia she read books about dying. That became the new goal.

She wanted to waste away, eventually, her skin would touch her bones and she would implode onto herself, and then the ghosts would stop haunting her, stop twirling around her, mocking her for still being of the flesh. And all would be well.

So she ate less and less, withdrawing into herself. During her NEWTS she existed on coffee alone. Then even less than that. She drank water, water, so much water, just to kill the terribly beautiful hunger that welled and overflowed inside her.

It was a constant reminder: you want this, YOU want this, you WANT this, you want THIS. It pitter pattered against her rib cage, the arrhythmic beating of her heart emphasizing every word, every reminder of her impending doom. She embraced it, she counted each heartbeat, counting down from 100, waiting for her to not reach zero.

Sometimes she would wake up suddenly, walking to the kitchens, or tickling the pear. And she always turned around and stumbled away. How could she have walked there, when she could barely stand? She would always wonder, before she became concerned with almost ruining her new Plan. Her plan to escape, to make it all better.

That night, she lay in bed reading a newspaper, celebrating and mourning the year anniversary of the final battle. "Everything is alright now" the article read, "All is well." And that was her final though that night, repeated like a mantra; "All was well" three heart beats, "All was well" three heartbeats "All was well". She counted between each phrase. 99. "All was well" 98. "All was well" 97. "All was well" 96. "All was…" 95. "All…" 94. "A-"


End file.
